How new USPS API update will affect Magento?

The United State Postal Service keeps on making changes to their APIs on regular basis. If you are one of those merchants who make use of United States Postal Service rates in Magento, there’s something important you need to know. The change came into effect from 28th September 2014, which ended support for their RATEV3 API. Before September update, the API was updated on 7th September 2014, which involved:

Method names update to Media Parcel Name and Library Parcel Mail

Update of country names for Montenegro and Tokelau (Western Samoa)

The current major update that is likely to affect Magento users is replacement of RateV23 API with RATE V4 API. After the update was rolled out all the users of Magento of the order of or below Magento Community 1.6 did not receive USPS rates. However, merchants using Magento Community version of 1.6 were not affected by the update. No changes were required on store powered by Magento versions of and above 1.6. Let us take a look how the change would reflect on Community and Enterprise Edition versions 1.4.1 to 1.9:

MAGENTO COMMUNITY EDITION

Magento Community Edition lower than 1.5.1

If you’re store is powered by any version of Magento Community Edition below 1.5.1, you will not receive any updates after the new update that went to effect from 28th September 2014. This is because these versions were using RATEV3 API which has already stopped working. In order to make it working you need to update the changes. There are various patches available that are made to update the USPS API version to RATEV4 automatically. These patches come with full compatibility with September 7th update as well.

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Magento Community Edition 1.5.1 or later

If your store is running on a version of Magento Community Edition 1.5.1 or above, there will be very little or no impact on your web store. These stores do not have to worry about ay changes as the store would remain unharmed. The store might require some minor possible configuration changes if you store is using dimensional shipping extensions, shipping override or any such extensions. Magento created various patches to assure the smooth installation of these updates. These patches come up with all the work done already leaving no major work for store merchants. Once the patches are installed, no further actions are required on your part. After this all the USPS rates can be received by the store powered by Magento Edition below 1.5.1. To get all the latest functionalities, features and quality improvements on your Magento store, it needs to be updated at the earliest.

How will this affect Magento?

USPS API update has affected all the websites that make use of USPS API by calling out to USPS in shipping rate calculator. So if you have not updated your website in line with September 28th update of RATEV4, you’re likely to receive an error during the rate calculating process. This is because it only supports rate calculations only for certain zip codes.

If you looking for a magento service company to correct this for you, you can get in touch with our team of developers who can help you get things working to enable seamless shipment calculations.